The trouble with product differentiation is that every unique ingredient or feature will be copied. However, a truly authentic and consistent brand identity cannot be copied. This allows brands like Liquid Death to succeed, despite selling a commodity. Companies should invest in brand differentiation by establishing their category and also what they're selling. If you must have product differentiation, do it in multiple ways to make it more defensible.
This piece highlights a case study from Kraft's Cheese & Dairy unit, illustrating how it crafted a category growth strategy across diverse brands. It identifies 4 levels of marketing sophistication: marketing as a cost center, brand building and pricing power, product and business model innovation, and driving marketing capitalization. Price-slashing Philadelphia would've wrecked the cheese's premium status. Cost-cutting on Velveeta would've been a massive opportunity cost. Each Kraft brand required tailored strategies based on their market positions and consumer dynamics.
Limited-time, often quirky flavors from food companies attract attention on social media and appeal to adventurous Gen Z consumers.
6 questions to ask your customers for non-generic social proof.
A bottom-up content strategy for SaaS companies with smaller budgets.
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Brands face new challenges in maintaining authenticity amid AI-driven misinformation as trust in news and social media declines. Consumers are increasingly becoming more on guard for anything that seems like brand-washing. They've been turning to dark social to remedy their growing distrust of social media and recreate a circle of trust in their digital lives. Private chats and group threads are on the rise. Brands should take this as an opportunity to build on their dark social strategy, such as encouraging consumers to share their content in private channels and experimenting with click-to-message ads.
Gen Zs and millennials demand a lot from employers and businesses, although the cost of living remains their top concern — nearly all Gen Zs and millennials want purpose-driven work. They're not afraid to turn down an assignment or employer that doesn't align with their values. 6 in 10 believe they have the power to drive change within their organizations. They prioritize meaningful work, the flexibility to balance work and personal life, supportive workplaces that foster mental health, and competitive pay.
Use weird and funny job posts to generate viral buzz on your careers page. Create a fake job post, rebrand a common job, or invent a weird job that you actually will hire. These work well because they take zero budget, generate PR, and show potential employees that you have a fun culture.
A strong guarantee on a website is an effective way to address the concerns of qualified non-buyers and increase sales. Frame the guarantee, such as a refund promise, in positive terms to avoid suggesting the product quality is actually questionable. Use your guarantee to restate your offer and expand upon the benefits of moving forward. Run tests on the guarantee to see what results in the highest conversion. Think about how you can use a guarantee as part of your value proposition.
The Coca-Cola Lens is an insights platform that integrates real-time data from various sources to analyze consumer behavior, preferences, and market trends. It also provides competitive analysis and supports targeted marketing efforts to enhance consumer engagement and brand loyalty.
Upscale allows you to enlarge and enhance images by improving colors and resolution up to 8X. It uses AI to spruce up old, grainy, or fuzzy pictures. It's free to use, with a limit of a handful of upscales per email address per day.
The decision on where to place product marketing depends on your specific context, leaders' strengths, size, market dynamics, and product complexity. Placing product marketing in the product organization can lead to improved collaboration and faster feedback loops. But it can also result in potential misalignment with market needs or limited accountability for driving revenue. This piece covers the pros and cons of placing product marketers in the product vs. marketing department.
By reinforcing positive memories through customer feedback surveys, businesses can strengthen brand relationships. Memories of experiences play a crucial role in influencing future loyalty behaviors. Use surveys not just to gather feedback but to remind customers of the positive aspects of their experience. Incorporate regular reminders of these positive interactions through personalized follow-ups and targeted communications.
This piece explores how to implement localized pricing to boost sales in international markets by tailoring prices to each country's economic conditions. It details the necessary steps, including currency display, value assessment, and payment methods. It also includes a case study from Codecademy on segmenting prices by GDP.
Tips include starting small to cultivate connections and hosting workshops around activities like listening to customer data and understanding job stories.
An infographic breaking down 10+ elements that make up the anatomy of a “perfect” blog.
Examples of effective B2B popups from Zendesk, Hootsuite, and Shutterstock.
Netflix's ad-supported plan now has 40 million monthly active users, with more than 40% of all signups in ads markets picking the plan. The Trade Desk, Google's Display & Video 360, and Magnite will join Microsoft this summer as Netflix's main programmatic partners for advertisers. Netflix has announced plans to launch an in-house ad tech platform. It also announced a slew of new content, including two NFL Christmas games, and a slate of new measurement partners.
Small businesses worldwide are grappling with a crisis of confidence in their marketing efforts, with only a quarter feeling assured about the effectiveness of their marketing strategies. This lack of certainty has spurred SMBs to take proactive measures, such as increasing budgets, dedicating more time, and exploring additional marketing channels to enhance performance. Despite these efforts, the relentless demands of running a business often leave little time for marketing endeavors, relegating such tasks to the bottom of the list.
A list of tools to test any website that includes tools for measuring download speed, monitoring user experience, testing accessibility, and locating broken links. All of the tools have free plans, while most also offer premium options.
Len can suggest headlines and alternatives for weak phrases, provide feedback on article ideas, and offer predictable points. Deepl excels at translation — it can instantly translate PDFs with a readable English version. Wordtune can help you write by filling in holes. If you need an analogy, definition, or explanation to clarify something, it can suggest multiple options to adapt as needed.
This Chrome browser extension removes AI-generated overviews from Google search results. It offers a clean, streamlined interface that focuses solely on traditional results. This was built in direct response to Google's recent rollout of AI Overviews.
Videos tend to underperform for businesses because they lack a clear plan or effective video marketing strategy. Instead of just focusing on view counts, come up with goals based on what you want your audience to do after watching your videos. To hook viewers, lead with a strong, benefit-driven headline or opening statement that immediately communicates the value proposition of your video. Retain viewers by making the content relevant to the platform and funnel stage of the viewer. Use visual cues in-video and the surrounding elements to reinforce your call-to-action.
Google's AI Overviews are an attempt to take unstructured data gathered from web content and give a structured answer to a search query, just like answer boxes. Its impact on SEO results will vary widely across industries and categories. For informational content and top-of-funnel keywords, the clickthrough rate will likely decline by over 50%. However, there could be very little traffic loss on topics with deep content or products/service pages that can't easily be summarized.
On Monday, May 20, the former VP of Growth at Duolingo will share the playbook for how the company drove growth through PR initiatives, A/B testing, and gamification.
Accessible design improves the overall user experience and helps reach a wider audience while also ensuring legal compliance with ADA and WCAG.
A chart covering 9 brand touchpoints going from a LinkedIn post and a conversion (ie. purchase).
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Instagram launched a new informational interview series featuring a range of creators talking with Instagram development leaders about the platform and their concerns and challenges. The series is designed to provide insights directly from creators on all aspects of growing on Instagram. Topics include effective monetization approaches, community engagement, and AI advances. The first video in the series is included in the article.
Google is rolling out its AI Overviews search to U.S.-based users of Google Search. AI Overviews gives answers to queries using generative AI technology powered by Google Gemini. It provides a few snippets of an answer based on its understanding of queries and the content it found on the topic across the web.
Long pages often beat shorter pages in A/B tests. For a long page to be effective, you need to get readers to scroll down. Five tactics to encourage scrolling: avoid false page bottoms, use explicit signals to indicate there's more content, provide a clear benefit to progressing through the content, add “click-to-scroll” functionality, and add a sticky call to action. The best way to find out what works for your users is to run tests on your pages.
Weglot uses an effective and repeatable strategy in its digital ads. Its copy describes the user problem in a customer's own words. This is paired with creative that connects that customer to Weglot's solution and real KPIs that the customer achieved. The CTA uses objection-focused copy to show how easy it is to get started.
This guide shares tactics to get the most out of your brand film by turning it into a treasure trove of marketing assets. Short video clips, behind-the-scenes content, and impactful quotes can all be extracted and repurposed to maintain audience engagement and maximize your marketing budget. This approach not only enhances your content calendar but also builds early excitement and stronger connections with your audience.
5 helpful extensions, including Jasper Everywhere for seamless AI integration, Natural Reader for converting text to audio, and ParagraphAI for crafting polished content effortlessly.
This free Chrome extension helps you preview your content before posting on LinkedIn. You can see how your posts, images, and carousels will look on mobile, tablet, or desktop. There are also filters to quickly sift through past posts based on format, date, and popularity.
Mascots increase connection with a brand by 41%, in part because people form emotional bonds with them. Using a mascot long-term can increase profits by 34.1%. Companies should consider adding a mascot to their branding and then use it regularly so consumers recognize it. A mascot can be useful for customer engagement and provides an opportunity to showcase your brand's personality in your brand voice.
Folk CRM's co-founder Simo Lemhandez reveals the company's path to 5X year-on-year growth and 100,000 users. Folk's team created substantial early interest with a waitlist before building the product then spent 18 months developing a robust solution before beta testing. By manually onboarding early users, they gained valuable insights that informed their iterative pricing strategy, which involved doubling prices every 6 months.
This article delves into the cognitive biases that influence how people search and select information online. Confirmation bias leads users to favor content that aligns with their preconceptions, while authority bias makes them trust content from perceived experts. Tactics for marketers include using power words to establish trust, conducting thorough keyword research to match user intent, and enhancing content with authoritative signals such as certifications and expert endorsements.
Most PMMs don't conduct enough customer interviews. This post contains 10 questions to uncover the best insights.
X is now offering $500 in ad credit to advertisers who spend $250 on ads.
Adobe Analytics data reveals that U.S. e-commerce spending reached $331.6 billion in the first 4 months of 2024, up 7% YoY. Consumers are increasingly opting for cheaper goods across various categories, influenced by persistent inflation. Buy Now Pay Later services are expected to drive up to $84.8 billion this year. Mobile shopping continues to dominate, with mobile revenue expected to surpass desktop during the upcoming holiday season. Paid search remains the biggest driver of sales for retailers.
The advertising industry tells consumers to ‘buy, buy, buy', yet overconsumption is one of the driving forces of climate change, energy shortages, and poor mental health. Brands can employ honest and clever ads to promote their products without encouraging consumers to buy irresponsibly. This article contains examples from IKEA and Volkswagen that use honest advertising to effectively promote a product.
This post outlines a framework for rewriting a cold email targeting cloud cost optimization. Avoid 'salesy' subject lines, reduce personal pronouns, and emphasize the impact of the problem on the prospect. The revised email focuses on providing valuable insights, incorporating social proof, and adopting a softer tone to encourage response from recipients.
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